The Lone Gunman Convention

A weird end to a convention that became more and more about the assassination attempt as the week went on

Eric Trump addresses the convention (author photo)

Look, it would be easy to criticize Donald Trump’s rambling speech. So let’s get started.

I kid. Folks have generally said what needs to be said on this. His speech was truly not good. I’ll get to that in a bit. But what I wanted to focus on a theme of the convention that became more and more prominent as the week went on — the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that occurred right before the convention began.

At the beginning of the week, party leaders were encouraging speakers not to change their speeches to incorporate the shooting. This instruction was widely ignored. But shooting references seemed particularly ramped up on the final night. Possibly every speaker made some reference to it. Eric Trump mentioned the shooting at least four times by my count, using it as evidence of both his father’s strength and resolve and the unfair attacks on him by his opponents.

The more jarring uses of the shooting came from the religious leaders. Pastor Lorenzo Sewell kept talking about the “millimeter” between what the bullet did and what it could have done:

You can’t deny that God protected him. You cannot deny that it was a millimeter miracle that was able to save this man’s life. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him for such a time as this? Could it be?

But Franklin Graham really cranked it up to eleven, saying, very explicitly, “God spared his life.” He led the entire convention arena into a lengthy prayer, beginning with, “Thank you for saving the life of President Donald J. Trump. In his own words, it was you, and you alone, who saved him.”

Franklin Graham leads the convention in prayer (author photo)

Look, I am no theologian, and I know there is lengthy discussion across many faiths by people far smarter and more knowledgeable than I about why, if God can affect events in this world, He chooses to intervene in some cases but not others. Personally, if a faith leader told me that God diverted bullets away from a politician to hit innocent people in the crowd, I would not find that a particularly good reason to join that faith, even if I liked that politician a lot. And Graham even addressed the question: “I cannot explain why God would save one life and allow another one to be taken. I don’t have the answer for that.” Okay.

But then came Trump. And, to repeat what others have said, it was really a rambling speech. I’ve been to a number of Trump rallies over the past year, and this seemed more like those: lengthy, darting from topic to topic, incoherent at times, a bit jokey, and very much geared to the die-hard supporters in the room, not even to Republicans watching at home, no less persuadable voters.

But what stood out about it was that he devoted the first 17 minutes of the 90-minute speech to providing his own account of the shooting. He announced he was going to tell the story just once, and the tone of this was quite different from the rest of his speech and from any of the other speeches of the night. You could view it as a campaign speech, or you could view it as somber and sober testimony by a victim of violence processing his trauma. “I am not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said (with the crowd chanting, “Yes you are!”). I have no idea whether that moment was good or bad politics, but it was honestly kind of gripping. The crowd was largely silent throughout that section. The fact that the rest of the speech was largely incoherent was possibly evidence that Trump could, as David Bernstein suggests, use a bit more time to process just what happened.

But this section of the speech really cemented this as the main theme of a party convention that was probably more about the personal story of its nominee than any before it. Up until now, Trump’s rhetoric has focused mainly on his victimhood, his unfair treatment by the media, the justice system, Democrats, etc. This convention was a big pivot to seeing him as someone who conquered death and has God’s favor. I honestly doubt that gains him supporters, and probably just does more to rally the support of people who already supported him and imbue that support with a messianic fervor. This likely does less to affect the election than it does to affect the election’s aftermath should he lose.